Andrew

Have you used Yo yet? I'm getting pretty into it. It's a silly little app that literally just sends the word "Yo" to a friend's phone. If you have audio alerts turned on, a hyperactive little man also yells Yo at you, which is adorable and terrible all at once.

Yo is surprisingly popular and growing fast; last week the company received another $1.5 million in venture capital after getting an initial $1m last month. The ultimate goal is to build out an entire Yo network to try and rethink how notifications work. It's a particularly good example of the tech industry building a seemingly-ridiculous solution to a small problem that contains the germ of a much bigger idea within it. Yo might succeed or it might fail, but for the moment it's pretty fun to play with.

the lasting legacy of Yo should be to make the NSA seem utterly and ridiculously wrong

But whatever happens, the lasting legacy of Yo should be to make the NSA's position on collecting phone and email metadata seem utterly and ridiculously wrong.

Under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the NSA is allowed to collect business records that might be relevant to a terrorist act. Under an expansive reading of this rule (are there any non-expansive Patriot Act readings?) the agency claims that it's allowed to collect records of basically every call and email in America. Not what's being said, but who's talking to whom and when. This is known as metadata, or data about data, and collecting it is ultra-controversial: one one side the NSA claims that information about network traffic is just another Verizon or AT&T business record, and on the other privacy advocates have struggled to explain just how personal and revealing metadata can be.

But spend a couple minutes with Yo and you'll get it.

There isn't any other data — there's just Yo

Yo represents the radical idea that literally any communication from people in your network is valuable to you — it reduces the actual content of the message to secondary status and lets you fill in the blanks. A Yo from my wife at work 10am means something different than a Yo from a coworker at 10:15, which means something different than a Yo from a friend at 11. You can set Yo up to turn your air conditioner on and off. A Yo from Amazon might mean that a package has arrived; a Yo from Netflix might mean that the latest season of Scandal is now available to stream.

Written letters to emails to IMs to tweets to Snapchats to Yo: human communication has gotten shorter and more complex all at once. Yo explicitly highlights the value of metadata: who sent you a message and when. There isn't any other data. There's just Yo.

In this context, the NSA's position that it should be allowed to collect the bulk metadata of millions of phone calls and emails is insanity. Just draw the thread out to Yo: if NSA is allowed to collect metadata from Yo, it will straight-up be collecting the communications of millions of Americans, because there simply isn't any other data to collect. When the NSA allows the FBI and CIA to conduct thousands of searches for the communications of Americans, the charade of getting a warrant to dive past the metadata will be rendered inane: you can talk to the judge, but all you're gonna get is Yo.

you can talk to the judge, but all you're gonna get is Yo

And when people are killed based on metadata, as ex-NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden as admitted, Yo will find itself behind the trigger of a gun.

There's a lot of conversation in Washington about the NSA and bulk metadata collection; a handful of bills have appeared, and Obama has proposed ending the program if Congress authorizes the NSA to quickly collect similar data from phone companies. (Which may or may not actually accomplish anything, really.) A couple court cases have divided appeals courts and the issue might end up at the Supreme Court.

In short, everything's up in the air. The issue feels wonky and the solutions are caught between the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the seemingly endless complexity of digital communications.

But it's actually pretty easy to understand. Just download Yo and send a couple Yos to your friends. Ask yourself if the government should be allowed to collect that information without a warrant.

Yo.

We’ve heard a lot about Sony’s ready-for-production curved sensors — which will supposedly come in 2/3-inch and full-frame variants — but no concrete specs had made their way online… until now.

Reported initially by CNbeta, the site has obtained a copy of specs for the 2/3-inch variant of the exciting sensor and the accompanying lens, which is itself an impressive piece of hardware by the looks of it.

As you can see above, the world’s first curved sensor camera (or smartphone) will sport 22 megapixels of resolution, 10.8 stops of dynamic range at ISO 640, 41.1DB of sensitivity at ISO 400, and burst mode capabilities of 12fps at full res. It also boasts a signal to noise ratio of 18%… the same as the Canon 5D Mark III!

The lens that accompanies the sensor is listed as a 7.83mm f/1.2G lens that has an equivalent focal length of 20mm (the crop factor seems off for a 2/3-inch sensor… so be wary of this spec). This super-thin glass, by SAR‘s estimation, could make this “the smallest and highest quality compact camera ever made.”

Given the size of the sensor, it’s very possible this will appear first in cell phones, taking smartphone photography to another level entirely. Then again, the mention of teleconverters makes one wonder if this is a compact with a fixed lens that will offer higher zoom with attachments (development of zoom lenses is one of the main challenges presented by curved sensors).

We’ll just have to wait and see, but we should be getting a peek at the first curved sensor camera at Photokina. And while this is only a 2/3-inch variant, the full-frame version said to be accompanied by a Zeiss 35mm f/1.8 lens is still supposedly in the pipeline.

(via sonyalpharumors)

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Image credits: Photographs courtesy of Sony

This week, the House of Representatives approved legislation from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that would make it harder for cities to build publicly-owned broadband networks. The proposal is a shot at Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler, who wants to remove state-level restrictions on municipal networks; Blackburn's legislation would forbid the FCC from removing those restrictions. This is the latest escalation of a long-running war between municipal broadband supporters and incumbent broadband companies that have relentlessly opposed municipal broadband proposals.

Right now, only a few communities have municipal networks. But supporters argue that they provide a model that could give more of us faster and more affordable internet access in the future.

How does municipal broadband work? And why has it become so controversial? Read on to find out.

What is municipal broadband?

In most parts of the country, people get their internet access from a private company such as Comcast or AT&T. But in a few municipalities, broadband service is available from a publicly-owned utility.

Two of the most famous examples are Chattanooga, TN, and Lafayette, LA. Both services offer internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — 10 to 100 times faster than what's available in most parts of the country — at relatively affordable prices.

Is it a good idea for governments to run broadband networks?

Some people, especially conservatives, don't think so. They argue that governments aren't tech-savvy enough to keep their broadband networks on the cutting edge. And they also claim that it's unfair for the government to use taxpayer funds to compete with the private sector. Unsurprisingly, this argument is heartily endorsed by incumbent telecommunications companies, which have lobbied and litigated aggressively to discourage municipalities from getting into the broadband business.

The only way for towns in this situation to get high-speed internet service is to build it themselves

But supporters point out that in many towns, especially in rural areas, it's the private sector that's failed to keep up with the times. Some cities have gotten new fiber optic networks from companies such as Google or Verizon. But in other areas, the local phone and cable companies haven't made significant improvements in years, and have no plans to do so any time soon. Municipal broadband boosters argue that the only way for towns in this situation to get high-speed internet service is to build it themselves.

Still, municipal networks come with significant financial risks. Building them costs millions of dollars. Generally, the plan is for subscription fees to cover the costs. But if the project comes in over budget, or customer demand falls short of expectations, taxpayers could be forced to cover the difference.

Wouldn't it be better if governments weren't involved in broadband at all?

We rely on private companies for most of the products and services we get in a modern economy. No one thinks it's a good idea for the government to make shoes, run restaurants, or sell iPods. Shouldn't we treat internet access the same way?

Governments are always involved in the provision of basic infrastructure

This argument overlooks the fact that utilities have a much closer relationship to government than ordinary private companies. To build a broadband network, you need to either need to dig up a bunch of public streets or you need access to telephone poles located in public rights of way. You also need permission to trim trees you don't own, erect ugly utility boxes around town, risk damage to underground pipes and cables, obstruct traffic, and so forth.

So governments are always involved in the provision of basic infrastructure such as roads, sewers, electricity, and telecommunications. The question for cities is whether to provide those directly, or to grant private companies the privileges they need to do the job. This isn't so much a matter of principle as a question of which approach works better.

In practice, different types of utilities tend to be operated in different ways. Most roads are publicly owned, for example, while electric utilities are usually private. But there are some privately-operated roads and publicly-owned electric utilities. Traditionally, most internet access has been privately provided, but some municipalities have been experimenting with providing broadband service directly.

What have big telecom companies done to stop municipal broadband?

Over the last decade, incumbent phone and cable companies have been fighting a war of attrition against municipal networks. Incumbents understandably don't want to face competition from publicly-owned utilities, and so they've done everything they can to slow down and trip up municipal broadband proposals.

When municipal broadband proposals are on the ballot, incumbents often spend heavily to convince voters to vote no. Cable companies have given money to defeat candidates who promote greater broadband competition. And when municipal broadband proposals are approved, an industry-backed lawsuit often follows.

One of the most important weapons in incumbents' arsenal is state laws barring municipalities from building broadband networks in the first place. The fights over these proposals have been bitter, and municipal broadband supporters have beaten back some of them. But lobbyists for cable and phone companies have convinced legislators in 19 states to enact restrictions on public-owned networks.

What would Blackburn's legislation do?

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). (House GOP)

In a January decision, an appeals court ruled that the FCC had exceeded its authority by trying to impose network neutrality regulations on broadband providers. However, the court also said that the FCC would have the power to promote broadband competition in a different way: by overruling state-level bans on municipal broadband networks. Wheeler has signaled that he plans to do just that.

Municipal broadband opponents in Congress aren't happy about this. Last month, 11 Republican Senators sent Wheeler a letter warning him not to follow through with his proposal. Now the Republican-controlled House has approved an amendment from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that would bar the FCC from preempting state-level laws restricting municipal broadband networks.

Blackburn's amendment could mean fewer municipal broadband networks in America. The restrictions on municipal broadband that are in effect in 19 states would continue to apply. And other states would have the option to enact municipal broadband bans of their own.

Blackburn's amendment could mean fewer municipal broadband networks in America

As a practical matter, publicly-owned broadband is already a pretty rare phenomenon. Chattanooga, the largest city to adopt a municipal broadband network, only has 167,000 people. So most of us will continue to be limited to the same two options we've always had: the local phone company and the local cable company.

But the efforts in Chattanooga, Lafayette, and elsewhere are valuable experiments. They're teaching us a lot about how cities can best promote high-speed broadband networks. It's possible that we'll simply learn that publicly-owned broadband is a bad idea. But if one or more of these projects work out well, it could provide a model for a lot of other cities to emulate. (Of course, that's why incumbents are so opposed to them.)

Also, the threat of possible competition from municipal networks gives cable and telephone incumbents an incentive to be on their best behavior. So even people in areas that don't have municipal networks might benefit from having other cities build them.

The Blackburn amendment won't shut down existing experiments, but it will make it harder to get new ones off the ground.

What happens now?

Blackburn's proposal was attached to a Financial Services appropriations bill. For it to become law, the language would have to be included in the Senate version of the legislation, and the bill would have to be signed by President Obama.

That doesn't seem too likely. House Democrats were sharply critical of Blackburn's proposal, and it is likely to face skepticism in the Democratic-controlled Senate. President Obama is also likely to oppose the proposal, given that it would hamstring Wheeler, his pick to lead the FCC.

For many men, wearing a tie is a necessary evil of fashion. We aren't quite sure which tie to wear, but this infographic makes it easy to pick out the right one and try some different knots.

Read more...

Almost over night, as states enacted cell phone bans, driving while yakking on your mobile became akin to dropping a bag of McDonald's trash in the middle of a sidewalk after eating your lunch. It just wasn't right.

Conventional wisdom suggested that talking on a cell phone while driving is bad for you and everyone around you—as dangerous as drinking and driving—and increased the risk of accidents.

Now, a new study suggests conventional wisdom may be wrong as far as accidents are concerned. Researchers at the University of Colorado and RAND Corporation wanted to better understand the impact of the cell phone legislation. After California enacted a ban on driving with a hand-held mobile in July 2008, they designed a study that looked at accident rates before and after the new law.

Distracted driving since 1983. By Lyn Alweis/Denver Post

According to their research, published in the journal Transportation Research, they found no evidence of a reduction in accidents.

Daniel Kaffine, an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an author of the study, says he was "shocked" when he crunched the numbers.

"We were expecting to find maybe a five to ten percent reduction in accidents. We had read the studies that talking on your phone is as dangerous as drinking and driving.The researchers were shocked when they crunched the numbers." But even after controlling for gas prices, miles traveled, rainfall, and holidays—all factors that impact traffic patterns, road volume, and crashes—they found no impact on the rate of accidents.

"Only after spending a ton of time looking at the data, slicing it in different ways, we eventually came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of a decline in accidents. It took a while for us to convince ourselves that there wasn't something there."

There were some important limitations to the study: Kaffine and his co-authors didn't look at fatalities, so there's a chance that while the rate of accidents didn't decrease, the subset of fatal accidents did. What's more, the researchers only looked at 12 months of data, so the ban in California may have had an impact over the longer term.

What about other studies on cell phone bans?

But other researchers have looked at this question of the impact of using cell phones while driving—and have come to mixed conclusions.

One study observed that talking while driving increased the risk of accidents by 4.5 times. Another study showed accident rates decreased by about six percent following new legislation, and another that cell phone bans targeting all drivers had a particularly positive effect on young drivers.

Other publications—like this latest from Kaffine—have concluded that bans have little impact on accidents: drivers mostly return to their old habits and accident rates creep back to normal levels mere months after the laws come into place. What's more, switching to hands-free devices appears to be just as dangerous as using hand-held phones and driving. Even studies that have found that drivers' habits change following regulation also demonstrate that accident rates and casualties don't budge.

This is not an invitation to drive and text

These mixed results aren't an invitation to drive and text. But they do have interesting implications for policy: Kaffine's conclusion was that we need more encompassing efforts to address distracted driving. "Simply banning cell phone use seems to be unlikely to get any meaningful reduction in traffic accidents. It doesn't mean it's not a dangerous thing to do; it just means when you put the ban into the real world, the actual effectiveness of the ban looks to be much less than its hypothetical effectiveness."

If fines are put in place but people behind the wheel continue to chat—using hands-free devices, or Put simply, these policies can't save us from ourselves.covertly texting whenever they can—just introducing the legislation probably won't save lives. Accident rates might not drop because people are even more distracted behind the wheel, trying to hide the fact that they are using their mobiles.

Put simply, these policies can't save us from ourselves. Serially distracted drivers may continue to be so regardless of changes in the law. Kaffine said we need to understand more about why these bans may be less effective than lawmakers and others hoped. And that may be as difficult to do as resisting the urge to talk and drive.

"If the problem is compliance, then increasing the fines for talking on your cell phone would likely increase the compliance level," he said. "If the problem is the other distracted things people do in their cars and cell phones are just one of the many things they might do, we need to figure out how to address that."

If and when you happen to get pregnant, your doctor will likely give you a date for when to expect your newborn to arrive. Your obstetrician will likely, knowing or unknowingly, rely on data done by a 19th century German physician, and estimate your baby will be born 40 weeks after conception.

And, it turns out, your doctor will near certainly be wrong.

Only 3.5 percent give birth 40 weeks after conception, according to Brookings Institute researcher Matt Chingos, who is the force behind the new site whentoexpect.com. That works out to about one in every 30 women having their baby on the date they were told to expect the arrival.

The most likely birth date is actually seven days prior to the traditional 40-week estimate; that's when about 4.4 percent of babies are born. You can see that in this chart of Chingos' data that the Boston Globe created.

Chingos' estimates rely on Centers for Disease Control data on the millions born between 2006 and 2010. And it shows that length of pregnancy works out to be something like a bell curve, with a wide variation between different women in terms of gestation period.

Keep in mind, this chart doesn't necessarily suggest that most women will give birth seven days before the traditional due date. Instead, it shows that 4.4 percent of women will give birth at that moment, which is a higher percentage (but certainly not a majority) of any other days in the two-month range.

Separate research has shown that women's gestation periods tend to vary naturally by as much as five weeks. That study, conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has similarly shown that just about 4 percent of women give birth on their due date, while 70 percent have their baby within 10 days of the predicted arrival.

In other words: the uterus is not a crystal ball, despite our best attempts to use it to see the future.

Last week, a video posted by YouTube user Marques Brownlee showed the alleged front panel of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 being put through a number of scratch tests and significant bending. Now, Brownlee has released another video putting the same display through more rigorous scratch tests, this time with two different types of sandpaper.


Brownlee cites the Mohs scale of mineral hardness in his testing, which is a scale rating mineral hardness from 1-10. The iPhone 5s' Gorilla Glass display is rated at a 6.8, while sapphire crystal, which Apple uses for the iPhone 5s Touch ID home button, is rated at 9. The two sandpapers used for the test include garnet, which is rated at a 7 on the Mohs scale, and emery, rated slightly above an 8.

Upon testing, both types of sandpapers were able to scratch the iPhone 6's front panel, but it did show better resistance than the Gorilla Glass display for the iPhone 5s. Notably, the sapphire Touch ID home button on the iPhone 5s did not display any marks after being scratched by the sandpaper. This would indicate that the alleged front panel from the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 is not sapphire crystal, but instead perhaps a next-generation version of Gorilla Glass. It is also possible that the panel could be a hybrid sapphire coated display, which was patented by Apple last year.

A report last month claimed that Apple would only be using a sapphire display in the larger 5.5-inch iPhone 6 over concerns about high cost and limited supply. Earlier rumors had indicated that Apple would have enough sapphire glass for production of both iPhone 6 models and the iWatch in 2014.

Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 6 in early September with a release coming a few weeks later. It is unclear whether the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch versions of the device will launch at the same time, with recent reports claiming that the larger iPhone 6 will be released later this year or in early 2015. In addition to a larger display, both models of the iPhone are expected to include a faster A8 processor, a thinner profile, an improved camera, and Apple's new iOS 8 mobile operating system.

When it comes to macro photography, knowing how to properly focus stack your images can make a massive difference. To that end, the walkthrough above and Photoshop tutorial below offer a fantastic explanation of what focus stacking is, why and when you should be using it, and how to do it using software most of us already have installed and ready to go.

Focus stacking, for those who don’t know, is the combining of several images (sometimes tens of images) shot at different focus distances so that the entire image is in focus. This is particularly important for macro photography because the close you get to a subject the shallower your depth of field gets.

By combining images where the focus point is slowly changed, you end up with a final composite that is 100% sharp and in focus.

So these (plus 4 more):

Become this:

“But why would I do this?” you may ask. Why not just stop down the lens all the way? For one, that might not actually give you enough of the image in focus depending on how small your subject is and how close you are to it; plus, you’ll need to up your shutter speed or bring in serious flash power to compensate and that might not be an option.

And then there are quality issues, because most lenses perform best at an aperture between f/5.6 and f/8. Shooting all the way closed down can kill sharpness even as it brings the entire image in focus, simultaneously causing aberrations and other issues.

Using focus stacking, you can take multiple pictures at your lens’ ideal aperture and end up with a tack-sharp shot like this one:

So… how do you do this? The best option is to use a dedicated focus stacking program as the video at the top shows, but if you don’t have access to one or don’t want to pony up the cash just yet, the tutorial below will show you how to do it in Photoshop:

Nailing down this technique is crucial if you’re going to take your macro photography to the next level. So check out the videos and examples above and, if you have further tips, feel free to drop them in the comments down below! Happy snapping.

(via Reddit, H/T SpookyRED)

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Image credits: Focus stacking Tachinid fly by Muhammad Mahdi Karim and Laboulbeniales on Harmonia axyridis by Gilles San Martin

"Welcome to my restaurant; now please pay my employees."

That's tipping in a nutshell, according to Mark Ventura, a former waiter and an economics major at Miami University. Ventura was quoted last week in an article profiling the restaurant Packhouse Meats, which opened in January in Newport, KY. The restaurant has a no-tipping policy. Signs proudly announcing the embargo are on full display in the restaurant, and the credit card slip only has a place for your signature — no extra line for gratuity.

Plenty of people have written about the indignities of the American tipping system. English author Lynne Truss once compared visiting New York to visiting the Third World: "In this great financial capital ... tips are not niceties: give a 'thank you' that isn't green and foldable and you are actively starving someone's children." The Village Voice's Foster Kamer called tipping "an assault on fairness" for everyone involved in the transaction: "It reinforces an economically and socially dangerous status quo, while buttressing a functional aristocracy," he wrote in "The Death of Tipping". Meanwhile Michael Lewis, in one of the most well-known essays on the subject, argued against it from the consumer's perspective, comparing obligatory tipping — and what sort of tipping isn't in some sense obligatory? — to a government tax: "I feel we are creeping slowly toward a kind of baksheesh economy in which everyone expects to be showered with coins simply for doing what they've already been paid to do."

And yet for some reason, the customary practice of tipping endures, and all of us who read these essays and hope they catch on continue to actively participate in the system we seem to so publicly hate. As William Scott pointed out almost a century ago in The Itching Palm, one of the first published anti-tipping screeds, "There are abundant indications of a widespread distaste for the custom but the sentiment is unorganized and inarticulate."

Here, then, is the complete case against tipping.

1) Tipping lets employers off the hook

The first and most compelling rebuttal to any case against tipping is always BUT THAT'S HOW SERVERS MAKE MOST OF THEIR INCOME.

Yes, that's right — and that's the problem. Restaurant servers' hourly wages are ridiculously low — $2.13 an hour, in fact, in most states — and they do depend on tips to account for the bulk of their income. Taking away a server's tips would put her in a bad place financially —  unless her employer ups her hourly wage. As it now stands, the tipping model lets business owners make more money at the expense of their employees' hard work. But rather than let their employees grovel for tips, restaurateurs ought to be required to pay their employees a living wage.

Consumers should not be responsible for paying the incomes of a restaurant owner's employees. For one thing, it isn't fair to the consumers. But more troublingly, it isn't fair to the employees: a server's ability to pay his bills shouldn't be subject to the weather, the frequency with which he touches his guests, or the noise level of the restaurant, all of which are factors that contribute to the tip amount left by a consumer.

As the Economy Policy Institute (EPI) notes,

Tipped workers — whose wages typically fall in the bottom quartile of all U.S. wage earners, even after accounting for tips — are a growing portion of the U.S. workforce. Employment in the full-service restaurant industry has grown over 85 percent since 1990, while overall private-sector employment grew by only 24 percent. In fact, today more than one in 10 U.S. workers is employed in the leisure and hospitality sector, making labor policies for these industries all the more central to defining typical American work life.

EPI also cites research that the poverty rate of tipped workers is nearly double that of other workers (as the chart below indicates), and that tipped employees are 3 times more likely to be on food stamps.

2) Tipping is undemocratic

"The itching palm is a moral disease," wrote Scott in his 1916. To him, tipping was a threat to the founding principle of democracy: that all men are created equal. Allowing an American citizen (i.e. the person being tipped) to adopt the posture of a sycophant is deeply undemocratic, argued Scott, because it limits self-respect to the "governing classes" (i.e. the tippers).

According to Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, the practice of tipping originated in Europe and only later migrated to America just after the Civil War. (As for why the practice started in Europe in the first place, Kamer discusses different theories.) Wealthy Americans returning home from European vacations wanted to show off what they'd learned abroad, and so they started tipping their service workers.

Tipping, in other words, is rooted in an aristocratic tradition. It should come as no surprise that tipping took off in Europe, a continent that promoted a clear distinction between the servant class and higher forms of society. But as Scott notes, America prides itself on not distinguishing social groups bases solely on their financial means. In fact, he notes, "Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape."

Scott isn't the only one with this view. According to Yoram Margalioth of Tel Aviv University Law School, tipping in America was at first "met with fierce opposition as fostering a master-servant relationship [was] ill suited to a nation whose people were meant to be social equals." The Anti-Tipping Society was founded in 1904 in Georgia, and convinced its 100,000 members to foreswear tipping for an entire year. Labor unions, too, came out against tipping, as did the president of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers. Opposition to tipping finally got codified into law, when Washington State passed a no-tipping law in 1909. Five other states followed suit, though, according to Wachter, none of the laws were enforced, and as a result, all of them were repealed by 1926.

Today, tipping continues to be de rigueur in America, while, ironically, the European custom has been replaced in its home country by a service charge.

3) Tipping doesn't do what it's supposed to do

As Margialoth notes, many people view tipping "as an informal service contract between the customer and the waiter, acting as a consumer-monitoring mechanism." This informal contract reinforces the belief that customers are able to monitor the service they receive and reward it accordingly. In other words, the argument goes, tipping motivates the server to do her best work. This makes some sense at least in theory, but in reality, it's really, really wrong.

After a qualitative study of more than 2,600 dining parties at 21 different restaurants, Lynn concluded that "tips are only weakly related to service." As Margialoth notes, the most important factor to patrons deciding upon tip amounts is the amount of the check, not the efficiency, or inefficiency, of the server; the quantity of the food they order, not the quality with which it's served to them. This finding, Lynn argues, "raises serious questions about the use of tips as a measure of server performance or customer satisfaction as well as the use of tips as incentives to deliver good service." It also emphasizes the fact that tipping is really, painfully unfair: how in the world is bringing a customer a $1,000 bottle of wine any more work than bringing her a $60 bottle? If Lynn is right, and customers generally tip on amount alone, the difference between the hypothetical 20 percent gratuities would be $188 — a $200 tip versus a $12 tip.

Steve Dublanica, author of two books on the service industry, said that any server would agree with Lynn's findings:

If you've waited tables, you know this is true. I learned this on the job years ago. You can give people amazing service and they'll stiff you. You can give them horrible service, and they can give you a great tip. There's no rhyme or reason to it. If only 2 percent of the tip is based on the service, what are the other 98 percent doing? If they're not tipping on service, they're tipping on psychological processes that are happening.

Jay Porter, owner of the Linkery restaurant in San Diego, said it's "silly" to think that servers are motivated merely by prospective tips. "Servers are motivated to do a good job in the same ways that everyone else is," he wrote in Slate, noting that they're motivated by wanting to keep their jobs and earn raises, and because they take pride in their work. He added: "In any workplace, everyone is required to perform well, and tips have nothing to do with it."

Not that tipping isn't a powerful motivator. It is — just not for the employee. The thought of being able to hire labor at around two bucks an hour is probably great news to employers looking to turn profits. Again, that's problematic. (See #1.)

4) Tipping is discriminatory … and it might be illegal

The way we tip reflects our prejudices, argues Freakonomics' Stephen Dubner. Here's what he told Brian Lehrer: "The data show very clearly that African Americans receive less in tips than whites, and so there is a legal argument to be made that as a protected class, African American servers are getting less for doing the same work. And therefore, the institution of tipping is inherently unfair."

But not only are black servers making less money than white servers — black diners are perceived to be leaving less money than white diners. Data collected in 2009 from over 1,000 servers all across the US "found that over sixty-five percent [of servers] rated African Americans as below average tippers." As a result, restaurant workers of all colors dislike waiting on black customers, studies found. The economy of tipping is so racially charged that both servers and diners are affected by prejudice.

Racism isn't the only kind of discrimination baked into the American tipping system. Female servers, too, face routine discrimination. As Lynn told Dubner: blonde, slender, larger-breasted women in their 30s earn some of the highest tips. Granted, the decision of how large a tip to leave is up to the subjective whims of the tipper, and different people have their own aesthetic preferences. But when a server's main source of income is her tips, and if those tips are regulated by the prejudices of the tippers, then a case could potentially be made that certain wage practices of restaurants are discriminatory.

This is the very case Kamer made (emphasis mine): "In 1971's Griggs v. Duke Power, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was ruled to prohibit businesses with discriminatory practices against those protected under it, even if that effect is unintended. Tipping, which has been proven to be discriminatory, could be downright unconstitutional."

5) Tipping might be psychologically harmful

In response to the question, "Do you feel pressured to tip at a restaurant even if you feel you received bad service?" 70 percent of those polled answered "yes." Margalioth wrote, "This seems to prove the social norm of tipping is so strong that many people feel extorted to tip."

But why do we feel such an intense pressure to tip? According to Lynn, we tip in order to prevent feeling guilty or ashamed for violating the social norm of tipping: "Perhaps [the tipper] dislikes having someone disapprove of her," he says. Or maybe she's "internalized some standard of fairness that leads her to feel guilty if she does not reward the server for his efforts." Ofer H. Azar, economist and professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, agrees with Lynn: "people tip because this is the social norm and, when they disobey the norm, they suffer a psychological disutility because of social disapproval, embarrassment, and feeling guilty and unfair."

There's another way tipping could take a toll on our psyches. Margalioth argues that tipping is a form of "negative externality imposed by wealthy people on the rest of society." According to Margalioth's theory, when top earners spend more money, those who earn less feel pressured to keep up, as research has shown. In other words, she suggests, middle-class and poor Americans feel like they have to be as "visibly impressive" as wealthier Americans. This pressure might be a motivating factor in tipping, she says.

The upshot of this research is summed up by Lynn: "I think it's quite possible that tipping norms undermine overall satisfaction or happiness."

6) Tipping is not really charitable

Arguing that we do away with tipping seems like a mean thing to do: the world needs more charity, thank you, so you should keep tipping your server. But the problem with this argument is that leaving a gratuity is not actually charitable.

The word "gratuity" comes from a word meaning "gift." But that word doesn't really make sense in the context of tipping, which is, of course, a quid pro quo arrangement. You don't gift the waiter money, you release funds to him that he, by virtue of simply being your server, has earned. He is rightfully entitled to that money, and you are ethically obligated to give him by social norms that seem to be as binding as any government law.

Scott sees tipping as "misguided generosity." While we are right to feel gratitude for those serving us, he argues we go awry when we feel obligated to express our "appreciation in terms of money." After all, notes Scott, "Self respect is satisfied with verbal appreciation."

Of course, verbal appreciation won't pay the bills of tipped workers, almost 13 percent of whom live in poverty. But rather than satisfy our consciences with trivial thoughts about how tips are really charitable, we should start holding restaurant owners accountable for their employees' wages. If they argue that servers actually like the tipping system because they come out on top, we should ask these owners to put their money where their mouths are and cut their own pay down to two bucks an hour.

Plus tips.

Gee, it's amazing how quickly Time Warner Cable will change its mind about the usefulness of 1Gbps fiber networks as soon as a major city like Los Angeles says it wants to built its own fiber network that could potentially kick incumbent cable providers to the curb. Time Warner Cable on Friday issued a response to Los Angeles's request for input on the best way to develop a community-wide fiber network that's capable of blowing anything TWC currently offers out of the water. Unsurprisingly, TWC said that it would just love to help Tinsel Town build its own fiber network.

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With all sorts of iPhone 6 rumors floating around, sometimes offering contradicting views on what Apple’s 2014 iPhone models will have to offer, French publication Nowhereelse has published an extensive iPhone 6 rumors infographic that looks at the various reports covering iPhone 6 hardware and/or design details and sought outside help in ranking their probability of becoming a reality.

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Want further evidence of how far the concept of a “selfie” has spread in our culture? Look no further than this wacky Selfie Toaster by the Vermont Novelty Toaster Corp. Simply provide your favorite shot of your beautiful face, and the company will send you a toaster that can burn your likeness into toast for your morning meal.

The custom toaster above was created for Mashable editor Lance Ulanoff, who has published a detailed look at how these toasters are made.

After receiving a photograph, the toaster company prepares the image in Photoshop for 15-30 minutes, and then uses a computer-guided metal cutting machine to create a plate of your face. After finishing and polishing the plate, it’s inserted into a toaster where, once heated, it can impart your mug onto bread (two selfie slices per “load”, in fact).

If you want your own Selfie Toaster, you can start the ordering process by uploading your pic over on the company’s website. It’ll cost you a pretty penny though: each of these novelty toasters has a price tag of $75.

The Selfie Toaster [Vermont Novelty Toaster Company via Mashable]

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P.S. For another example of toasting photos onto bread, check out The Image Toaster, which we featured in March of last year.

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Image credits: Photographs by Vermont Novelty Toaster Corp./Galen Dively

There has been a back-and-forth battle in recent weeks about what is causing the internet congestion that is degrading service to Netflix consumers. Last week Verizon published a blog post that offered the first real specifics in the debate, saying that it had studied the situation closely based on a customer in Los Angeles and found that there was plenty of capacity available at different points where Netflix could deliver traffic to its network. The congestion, Verizon said, was being caused by Netflix, which had made the decision to send all its data over a limited set of very crowded routes. Today, Level 3 — which helps carry that Netflix traffic to Verizon's network in LA — fired back in a blog post of its own. It says the problem...

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You might not expect Hodor — or most characters from Game of Thrones, for that matter — to be down to party, but it turns out that he wants to bring you over to Westeros for an intense night. The actor who plays Hodor, Kristian Nairn, has worked regularly as a DJ for over a decade, and he's about to go out across Australia on a Game of Thrones-themed tour that's being called Rave of Thrones. Westeros-style dress is required at all locations, which themselves will be decked in matching visuals inspired by the show. Apparently, each night will also have some special guests.

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Packing is an art form, and some people are naturals at it. But for those of us who aren't naturally talented at squeezing a week of clothing into a carry-on, data can save us. Numbers blog FlowingData points to calculations and charts from Reed Kennedy and Carrie Smith on how much underwear you're going to need for your next trip.

The idea is simple: use the top line to find the number of days you'll be away from home. On the left side, find the number of pairs of underwear you might hypothetically bring along. The point where those two meet in the chart shows how many times you'll have to do laundry on your trip in order to keep wearing clean underwear.

Source: Medium

The numbers in gold represent supreme efficiency — the points at which you will bring back zero clean underwear.

True, underwear is for most of us only a tiny portion of our luggage, but really, the chart can work on any article of clothing you only wear once (socks, t-shirts, etc.).

But there are a few caveats to Kennedy and Smith's math. One is that this chart assumes one pair of underwear per day. For example, if you work out on your trip (and if you wear underwear when you work out), you may need more. The chart also assumes that you'll do laundry only when you're on your last pair (which just feels like cutting it close).

So there may be a reason to pack yourself a cushion. And for that situation, never fear: numbers can still help. Smith and Kennedy also have a second chart that helps you figure out how inefficient your undie-margin-of-error is.

Weird Al has a new album of parodies coming out tomorrow, but you'll probably want to look for them on the web rather than over the radio: eight songs off of the album are getting music videos, and they'll be premiering over eight days. The first video came out this morning and has Al singing "Tacky," a parody of Pharrell's unbearably catchy hit "Happy."

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If you’ve been following the torrent of rumors surrounding the upcoming Canon 7D replacement, you know that one of the major pieces of info floating around is that the Mark II will sport ‘revolutionary’ sensor technology.

What that is, however, is still a mystery — for most of us, anyway.

According to rumor site Canon Watch, a tipster has informed them that the revolutionary new tech will be the next step in Dual Pixel technology’s evolution… something videographers in particular should get very excited about.

CW points out that, while the technology might have started closer to the entry level end with the 70D, it was quickly unlocked in the C100 and C300 cinema cameras Canon had already released.

The idea that the next evolution of the technology might come in the long-awaited flagship APS-C 7D Mark II doesn’t seem at all unlikely, especially when you consider that the camera was supposedly delayed because of Dual Pixel manufacturing issues.

None of this is confirmed, of course, and the source isn’t identified as ‘trusted’ or ‘known’ so it’s worth it to keep a skeptical outlook. For now, just stay tuned and we’ll be sure to keep you informed as we approach the rumored Photokina announcement.

(via CanonWatch)

Not exactly a reliable scientific study, a recent Craigslist rant by one “Busy NYC Restaurant” that describes itself as “a popular restaurant for both locals and tourists” has gotten a lot of press time for drawing attention to a troubling intersection of food service and photography.

Posted in the rants and raves section of the online classifieds site, the restaurant supposedly compared security footage from 2004 with that from 2014 and found that taking cell phone photos and other smartphone shenanigans have added nearly an hour to the average table time at the restaurant.

That’s right, according to the ‘research’ this restaurant allegedly did, patrons added nearly a full hour to their average stay at a restaurant by fiddling with their phones by taking pics of their food, of the restaurant, of each other and of themselves.

The rant quite simply breaks down the average experience in 2004 and compares it with 2014. In 2004, the stay involved what you would expect from a restaurant: walk in, spend 8 minutes figuring out what you want, order, get food, eat, ask for the check, and get out of there. The average time from start to finish: one hour and five minutes.

In 2014, things go a little differently. Here’s the word-for-word breakdown:

• Customers walk in.
• Customers get seated and is given menus, out of 45 customers 18 requested to be seated elsewhere.
• Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone (sorry we have no clue what they are doing and do not monitor customer WiFi activity).
• Finally the waiters are walking over to the table to see what the customers would like to order. The majority have not even opened the menu and ask the waiter to wait a bit.
• Customer opens the menu, places their hands holding their phones on top of it and continue doing whatever on their phone.
• Waiter returns to see if they are ready to order or have any questions. The customer asks for more time.
• Finally they are ready to order.
• Total average time from when the customer was seated until they placed their order 21 minutes. [Compared to 8 mins in 2004]
• Food starts getting delivered within 6 minutes, obviously the more complex items take way longer.
• 26 out of 45 customers spend an average of 3 minutes taking photos of the food.
• 14 out of 45 customers take pictures of each other with the food in front of them or as they are eating the food. This takes on average another 4 minutes as they must review and sometimes retake the photo.
• 9 out of 45 customers sent their food back to reheat. Obviously if they didn’t pause to do whatever on their phone the food wouldn’t have gotten cold.
• 27 out of 45 customers asked their waiter to take a group photo. 14 of those requested the waiter retake the photo as they were not pleased with the first photo. On average this entire process between the chit chatting and reviewing the photo taken added another 5 minutes and obviously caused the waiter not to be able to take care of other tables he/she was serving.
• Given in most cases the customers are constantly busy on their phones it took an average of 20 minutes more from when they were done eating until they requested a check. Furthermore once the check was delivered it took 15 minutes longer than 10 years ago for them to pay and leave.
• 8 out of 45 customers bumped into other customers or in one case a waiter (texting while walking) as they were either walking in or out of the Restaurant.

The average time from start to finish in 2014? According to the rant, it went from 1:05 to 1:55.

So let’s do some math.

The average life span (splitting the difference between men and women) is about 78 and a half years. There are 52 weeks in a year, which means that, on average, people live about 4,082 weeks in a lifetime. If you go out to dinner once per week, and spend an extra 50 minutes at your table every time because you’re taking pics, that comes out to 3,401.6 hours wasted.

When it’s all said and done, that means taking pictures of your food could potentially waste 141.7 days of your life. Some food for thought, if you will.

(via DineAbility)

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Image credits: Smart phones and food Exchange Place NOLA by Infrogmation, oh hi, yes i’m taking a picture of my food to tweet about it by Michelle Tribe and Group at Restaurant Vogelweide by Axel Hecht.

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First time accepted submitter SillyBoy123 writes What is the impact of file sharing releases on the movie industry? Ask the studios and they will say billions. An economist named Koleman Strumph is presenting a paper at the National Bureau of Economics this week that tries to estimate the crowd out from these releases. His conclusion: "I find that file sharing has only a modest impact on box office revenue." In fact, Strumph finds that file sharing before the official release of a movie can actually be beneficial to revenues: "One consistent result is that file sharing arrivals shortly before the theatrical opening have a modest positive effect on box office revenue. One explanation is that such releases create greater awareness of the film. This is also the period of heaviest advertising. In conjunction with the main estimates, this suggests that free and potentially degraded goods such as the lower quality movies available on file sharing networks can have some beneficial effects on intellectual property."

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Steak is delicious, but if the one you plan to eat is still frozen, there are better ways to defrost it than using the microwave. All you need for this method is a little water and two pans—no special tools or appliances at all, and it works in minutes.

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Everybody loves to hate email.

It’s overwhelming, all-encompassing, and perhaps most importantly, lacks the context we’ve come to expect from modern communication apps. It's hard to blame email, though, since most apps we use for managing it can only communicate via IMAP, an age-old standard that's slow and difficult to work with. When Google announced its Gmail API a few weeks ago, it seemed like we might finally have an answer to the question we’ve all been asking: when is email going to start working like the rest of our apps?

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Every year, right around this time, Americans start searching google for a specific set of three words "the July effect." The spike is pretty much impossible to miss on Google Trends, which shows terms people are searching for on the internet.

"The July effect" is shorthand for the supposed spike in medical mistakes at hospitals during the month of July — right when millions of medical residents start new jobs. With a crop of unexperienced doctors arriving in exam rooms, the theory goes, patients might get worse care — and might be more likely to die. In the United Kingdom they, much more bluntly, simply refer to it as the killing season.

researchers have conducted more than 200 studies on the july effect

The July effect is the kind of medical trivia that tends to turn up at cocktail parties, something I've always wondered about when it gets mentioned in passing as a definite fact. Is it medical lore or truth that July is a terrible month to be a hospital patient?

Turns out, a lot of researchers have this question too. They have conducted more than 200 studies on the July effect just in the past four years. What they find is a complex and nuanced portrait of how doctors-in-training effect hospital patients' lives.

The evidence does suggest that there is some level of a July effect: hospitals that are training new doctors in July tend to have more patient deaths than those without the newbies, all other things held equal.

At the same time, July isn't actually an especially deadly month to turn up at a hospital — even when you factor in all the new residents settling into hospital wards, the rate of patient deaths at hospitals (both at teaching and non-teaching hospitals) is actually higher in the winter than it is in the summer.

As to the higher patient death rates in hospitals with doctors-in-training? It might not even be the newest doctors who are to blame.

The biggest 'July effect' study suggests new doctors can increase deaths

(The Boston Globe)

The best guide to the July effect research is a 2011 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which was a review of 39 separate studies, conducted between 1989 and 2010, all trying to understand the concept. Studies included had to meet three criteria:

1. Looked at turn-over of physicians-in-training at the start of the academic year
2. Had a control group (those not effected by turn-over) in addition to the research subjects, to best understand the impact of new physicians
3. Measured changes in "patient mortality, morbidity, medical errors or efficiency of care."

Most studies exploit a helpful dichotomy in the American medical system. There are some hospitals that train new doctors, which are usually known as academic medical systems. But other hospitals aren't in the business of training physicians. Many studies compare outcomes in July in those two systems, to get a sense of whether the new crop of trainees makes a difference.

After combing through the 39 studies, researchers say they do see some evidence for a July effect when measured by two specific factors: mortality (how many patients die) and efficiency of care. The effect seems to be strongest, the review researchers write, in the studies that had the most rigorous methods and analysis. In other words: better quality research tended to show a stronger July effect.

"Our review of the literature suggests 'the july effect' exists"

In the more rigorous studies, they found that risk of death in July increased between 4 to 12 percent, depending on the research paper. One study of British hospitals — the one that preceded the idea of 'the killing season' there — found that patients seen on the Wednesday after the national crop of new doctors started were 6 percent more likely to die than those seen the Wednesday before.

They do not, however, see convincing evidence that medical errors increase in July, a finding that's a little bit puzzling — you might expect, after all, an increase in patient deaths would correlate with more mistakes.

"Our review of the literature suggests that the 'July effect' exists," the team of researchers conclude, albeit with many caveats. "Methodological limitations and study heterogeneity do not permit firm conclusions about the degree of risk posed and how changeover affects morbidity and rates of medical error."

In non-jargon speak: a July effect seems to exist, but the research isn't good enough to understand how big of an effect it has on patient health.

But this doesn't necessarily mean July is a bad time to go the hospital

(Christopher Furlong / Getty News Images)

One of the studies that the Annals researchers thought was the very best, in terms of its rigor and analysis, was Dartmouth University Kane Anderson's 2009 paper in the American Journal of Orthopedics.

It was one that did show a July effect among hip fracture patients: those seen during July in teaching hospitals had demonstrably worse outcomes than those seen in facilities not training new doctors.

weirdly, july can still be a great month to end up in a hospital

But here's the weird twist: in both teaching and non-teaching settings, Kane and his colleagues find that July tends to be a really good outcome month for patients. In fact, patients seen in either type of hospital during the summer had lower mortality rates than those seen in January.

"Despite slightly higher mortality rates at teaching hospitals, July/August rates were generally the lowest rates across the months," Anderson and his colleagues write.

So, somewhat counter-intuitively, his study suggests that July is a preferable month to be seen at a teaching hospital to January — even with the July effect taken into account. In other words: the best time of year to get medical care might actually be this very month at a non-teaching hospital.

The new doctors aren't necessarily the problem, either

(Christopher Furlong / Getty Images News)

There are hundreds of thousands of interns starting new jobs as doctors in July. But there are also third, fourth and fifth year trainees transferring to new hospitals. And, as one study published in the British Medical Journal shows, all of them seem to have a spike in medical errors during the first three months of the academic year.

"Advanced trainees, particularly fifth year trainees, are considered to be technically more competent," the authors write, but still need lots of supervision and "guidance about hospital routines, material, and organisation."

If you're interested in learning to code, for fun or financial gain, this interactive chart from IEEE Spectrum can help you pick the first (or next) language to learn.

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The trust fund that pays for federal transportation spending in the United States is running out of money in August, prompting a big congressional debate over how to refill its coffers. But the the main proposals offered by the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee both miss a crucial fact: Americans are driving less than they used to.

The decline in driving is relevant to the debate for two reasons.

One is that it directly impacts the revenue situation. Federal transportation spending has historically been financed by federal gasoline tax revenue. The idea was that money for highways should come from people who use highways. That worked until the mid-aughts when gasoline tax revenue started to fall.

What happened? American cars have gotten more fuel efficient over time. Once the actual amount of driving started to plateau those improvement in fuel economy began driving nominal gas tax revenue downward. Meanwhile, each and every year inflation slightly eats away at the value of the gasoline tax. But congress kept on spending money on highways, rapidly depleting the trust fund until it was patched in 2012 with general revenue. The proposals on the table in congress right now are all proposals to find new kinds of patches.

Right now, fees on drivers account for only 72 percent of federal transportation spending, and even less than that at the state and local level. This is offset partially by the fact that a share of transportation spending goes to mass transit rather than highways, but at all levels of government the highway share of total spending is larger than the user fee share.

Transportation policy was supposed to avoid this outcome for good reason — there's no point in building more roads than people want to use.

If the amount of driving happening in America is in decline, stepping up the level of financial subsidies offered to encourage driving is an absurd result. Either spending on roads should fall, or else road users themselves should be charged more money for their activity. Any other approach constitutes a deeply unwise ratcheting up of public subsidies to a polluting and dangerous activity, feeding a dynamic of overbuilding.

Highways and other roads are great. But they are also expensive to build. The traditional formula of trying to build a quantity of highways that's roughly proportionate to what highway-users are willing to pay to use them makes a lot of sense. The new paradigm in Congress where highway spending is unrelated to driving-related tax revenue is a bad idea, and its bipartisan embrace is one of the public policy disasters of the past few years.

LeBron James startled the sports world today by announcing in Sports Illustrated that he'll be taking his talents to Cleveland, Ohio rather than resigning with the Miami Heat.

When James initially opted-out of the final year of his contract with the Heat, it was generally interpreted as a power play to restructure the team's contracts and attract some fresh talent. But as days went by without Miami succeeding in securing any firm commitments to add major new help, rumors grew that James was considering a return to his original team. Now it's happening. Here are five reasons why.

1) The Cavaliers are about as good as the Heat

Last season, the Miami Heat made their way to the NBA Finals for the fourth straight season. The Cleveland Cavaliers, by contrast, missed the playoffs for the fourth straight season. But despite those divergent fortunes, the currently constructed rosters of the two teams are about equal in quality.

NBA player evaluation is a controversial subject, but different metrics reach a pretty broad consensus that LeBron James is personally worth about 20 wins in the NBA (here's Nate Silver's preferred metric, here's one I like developed by economist Dave Berri) which is slightly larger than the gap in wins between Cleveland and Miami last season.

In other words, the Heat were a lot better than the Cavs solely because the Heat had LeBron James and the Cavs didn't. Add LeBron to the Cleveland roster, and the team is just as good. Except Cleveland, unlike Miami, has some young talent on the roster.

2) LeBron has extremely deep ties to Ohio

Personally, I like Cleveland. So much that I once proposed relocating Silicon Valley to the North Coast. But most people, given the choice, would rather live in Miami than in Cleveland. So to understand the move, you need to understand that James has deep personal tied to Ohio.

He grew up in Akron, not far from Cleveland. And he went directly from playing high school ball in Ohio to playing professionally for the Cavaliers. His wife is also from Ohio. He has no real personal or family connections in South Florida or anywhere else other than the Cleveland area.

3) The Eastern Conference is really bad

One major factor for James in deciding what to do this offseason is maximizing his chances of winning future championships. This decision is complicated by the fact that currently the teams located in the Western Conference are much much stronger than the teams located in the Eastern Conference. Last season, six of the top eight teams by point differential were in the West — including three of the top three.

That means that to maximize his odds of playing for the very best team in the league, LeBron would likely have to go West. But to maximize his odds of reaching the NBA Finals again, it makes the most sense to stay in the East. Speaking strictly in terms of probabilities, that makes the Eastern Conference attractive. And since the Eastern Conference is lacking in high quality teams, Cleveland looks about as good as any other destination. Stacked up against some potential Western suitors, the roster is unimpressive. But as we've seen, it's just fine compared to Miami's.

4) Nobody likes the Atlanta Hawks

Based purely on logical considerations, the best destination might well have been the Atlanta Hawks. Their record last season was slightly better than Clevelands, and their team also suffered a number of serious injuries that are unlikely to recur. They had the cap space to sign LeBron, and also play in a bigger media market that's still in the Eastern Conference.

And yet the Atlanta option never appears to have garnered substantial consideration from James or from any other high-profile free agents in recent years. It's not entirely clear why this is, but the city of Atlanta has gained a reputation for possessing indifferent sports fans who don't like to turn out for even reasonably successful teams.

5) If LeBron wins in Cleveland he'll be a hero

This is probably the most important consideration. When James decamped for Miami, he had aspirations of building a historic dynasty that would rival the Chicago Bulls teams that Michael Jordan led in the 90s or the Boston Celtics teams that dominated the NBA in the 1960s. It's clear by this offseason that it isn't going to happen. The James-led Heat mini-dynasty had an impressive four-year run, but not a historic one. Even if he won another ring there over the next three years, it wouldn't substantially change his legacy.

By contrast, winning even a single championship in Cleveland would be a huge deal. The Cavaliers have never won an NBA championship. The Cleveland Indians last won the World Series in 1948. The Cleveland Browns won a championship in 1964, two years before the inauguration of the Super Bowl. Any star player who leads any of these three teams to a championship, will be a sports hero to several generations of people in Northern Ohio. For a native son of the region to do it, would be especially special.

James has reached a point in his life and career where doing things that are truly special is what matters most to him and that means trying to win in Cleveland.